Headhunting Marketing Employees

A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing

Recruiting marketing employees is quite difficult, yet it looks so easy. While the process is quite involved and even can be more technical than sales recruiting, many fail to see the complexities and end up paying for their lack of caution dearly.

To prevent something, we first must know more about the topic and, specifically the causes. Therefore, we must ask ourselves why this is and, once aware what can companies do to ensure a successful marketing recruitment effort?

In order to successfully do so, let's first tackle the reason why recruiting marketing employees can be so difficult and what the ramifications are when things go wrong.

Recruiting Marketing Professionals - An Analysis

At some point in their career, the average business professional thinks about going into marketing or some related form of. The numbers are staggering. It's safe to say that 80% of business professionals consider the field and the majority of those end up actively pursuing it at one point or another.

When compared to accounting or sales, the number of interested parties is very, very high. In turn, the curiosity spawns a large number of resumes per posting (pretty much regardless of place posted or job write-up) or any sign of hiring interest.

Many times, companies think that they have found their match in the large quantity of interested applicants and think they are close to a recruiting solution, yet this is where the problem aries and it can be quite costly.

Unaware of marketing themselves or what they need to carry out a simple marketing campaign (thus converting marketing to ROI), the company trusts that the applicants can do what they claim. They pick the most outgoing individual and pay a lot for them.

6 months and $75,000 later, the company is forced to lay off a worker, recognize a spike in their unemployment insurance and hope they get it correct the next time. After the second time around, this becomes a vicious cycle.

How to Prevent a Recruiting Disaster

While nothing in this life is guaranteed, here is a start on how to sway the odds of a successful recruiting effort in your favor:

1. Have a firm marketing plan; don't let the applicant wing-it.

2. Test the applicants and make sure that they know what they are talking about. Press them; get their vision and their ideas about your own recruiting efforts.

3. Hire a recruiting firm that knows what they are talking about or an internal consultant.

4. Learn the different marketing tactics that comprise a successful campaign yourself. There are no short-cuts in marketing recruitment and knowing the different approaches yourself is crucial to being successful.

5. Think before jumping in - don't make decisions too quickly, yet don't perseverate for too long.

In the End

Beware when things look too easy to be true; recruiting the right marketing professional can be as difficult as task as recruiting any other position within your organization. Though, when you relentlessly pursue something and strive to get it right, you typically do.

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